Dousman was born in 1800 on
Mackinac Island,
Michigan, the son of
Michael Dousman, a prominent local
fur trader, and his wife. His father was highly successful and sent the son to the eastern United States to be educated in
Elizabethtown, New Jersey. For a period he worked as a clerk in a New York City store. After Dousman returned to Mackinac Island, he was employed by the
American Fur Company, which his father had served as an agent following the War of 1812. In 1826, the company sent Dousman to the frontier settlement of
Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, where he worked as an assistant to
Joseph Rolette, the company's local agent. In Prairie du Chien, Dousman proved his abilities as a trader, quickly rising in the company's ranks. By 1834 he had acquired an interest in the company's Western Outfit, and in 1840 he became an equal partner in the business together with Joseph Rolette and
Henry Hastings Sibley. In 1842 the American Fur Company declared bankruptcy, as the European market had declined, and furs were harder to find in the West. To continue in the trade, Dousman entered into a joint venture with Rolette, Sibley, and
Pierre Chouteau (of
St. Louis, Missouri) to organize a new company to replace it on upper Mississippi. A few months later, Rolette died in debt to the new company, and most of his estate was seized by the remaining partners, including Dousman. With this and other revenue, Dousman acquired more wealth. He began to invest in lumber mills in northern Wisconsin and real estate in some of the state's growing population centers. Timber was in high demand in the developing settlements of the upper Midwest. As Dousman began building his investments during the 1830s, he began a long affair with Margaret Campbell, a local Prairie du Chien woman, who may have been of
mixed-race. Together they had three children: Emily, George, and a third unnamed child who died at birth in 1838. Campbell also died of complications at this birth. In 1844, two years after Joseph Rolette's death, Dousman married his widow, Jane. (She and Rolette had legally separated in 1836, and he built a house for her.) Together the couple moved into the large two-story brick house that Dousman had constructed a year earlier. Hercules and Jane Dousman had one son,
Hercules Louis Dousman II, who was born on April 3, 1848, the year that Wisconsin became a state. In the 1870s the Dousman house at this site was replaced with what is known as
Villa Louis. This was also called the "House on the Mound", because of its location on what is believed to be a prehistoric Indian earthwork mound. ==Community leader==